Total Recall
by Redlance-ck
Summary: In which there is a discussion held by Claudia, Pete and Steve about The Artificer and Recall's intentions towards her.


**Disclaimer**: Characters do not belong to me (although their alter egos do). I'm just having some fun with them. Please don't sue; I have nothing of monetary value to offer.

**A/N**: Looks like this AU is still with me. Hopefully that's a good thing. ;) Follows the other stories in this 'verse "The One Where They're All Randomly Superheroes" and "An Encounter With The Artificer". I should have probably lumped all these together, but when I posted the first one I had no idea that it was going to grab a hold of me like this. For anyone who wants to check out what The Artificer looks like all kitted out, I'll be posting a link of some artwork my gf did for me on my profile. To anyone who has read these so far and enjoyed them, favourite them, or taken the time to leave a review; thank you so, so much! You are adored for it. :)

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><p>Agent Pete Lattimer was no stranger to dangerous situations. He had personally stared Death in the face on no fewer than three occasions and while both Myka and Claudia loved to remind him that they'd saved his ass, it didn't take away from the fact that he'd come back from the brink of the eternal abyss. And it <strong>was <strong>an abyss; the prospect of death was about as dark and scary as it got, though it was pretty well neck and neck with the memory of his partners staring it down while he stood by helpless to do anything other than watch. But that memory was neither here nor there at the present moment.

No, the point his brain was trying to make was that Pete Lattimer, The _Déjà_ Dude himself, had bested Death on multiple occasions and yet none of them came close to causing the same level of terror that he achieved when Claudia Donavon made him sit in that damn chair. Because sitting in that chair meant he was going to be hooked up to all kinds of monitors, which in turn meant that she had something she wanted to test out on him that would require very close attention be paid to the inner workings of his body. "It's cool, it's just so I can make sure your insides aren't melting." She'd told him once, in a manner that he'd supposed had been intended to put him at ease that really, really hadn't worked at all. Like not even a little bit. But he hadn't melted then and her argument remained that if he'd survived that specific test then everything else was going to be a cakewalk. It didn't exactly provide him with the level of comfort he'd have preferred. Maybe this was Death's way of getting back at him for slipping through its boney fingers.

"Dude!" Claudia yelled as she straightened to let her posture betray her annoyance. "Will you please sit still? You're like a fraking five-year-old getting his hair cut." Pete scrunched his nose up; making a face that only added an extra example to her point.

"How much longer is this going to take?" He whined, wiggling the fingers of his right hand. Each of the digits had a different coloured finger clamp affixed to it, plastic wrapped wires protruding from the ends of them and running down and along the floor to where they were hooked up to some kind of homemade-looking machine that Pete didn't even know where to begin theorising on the purpose of. Claudia's deft digits were back at the small rectangular Borg-looking – he'd received a quick high-five upon voicing that particular thought – implant set against his temple. She was adjusting a miniscule dial with a tiny screwdriver and throwing a glance toward a second machine that the suction cup she'd slapped in the centre of his forehead was hooked up to.

"That depends. How many more pointless questions are you going to ask me?" Pete huffed and let his body relax further into the armchair that was nowhere near as comfortable as it looked. They were in what both Claudia and Myka liked to refer to as 'The Study', but that Pete much preferred to call 'The Seventh Level of Hell' because it wasn't quite at rock bottom but it was close.

"Okay fine," he said with just the hint of a pout hanging about his mouth, "then just tell me what it is exactly that you're doing." Claudia sighed in exasperation, but he knew she couldn't refuse a potential moment of gloating. She was a smart cookie and proud of it. He was proud of it too, but saved those kinds of compliments for instances that would incur maximum brownie points.

"Well if all this goes according to plan, the next time you go all Phoebe Halliwell on us and get one of your uber-vibes this little currently unnamed piece of ingenuity," she tapped the surface of the object that was holding itself against the side of his head by way of something he hadn't yet been made privy to, "will shoot any of the more clearer images to a computer back here at HQ. It'll also upload them to any Farnsworth it has the frequency to, which will be mine, Jinksey's and Myka's once I tune them in." Pete nodded absently, lifting a finger to scratch around the outside of the plastic-feeling mechanism only to have his hand slapped away. "Don't fiddle." He frowned at her, but lowered his hand.

"And if it doesn't go to plan?" She waved a hand dismissively, an action that came altogether too quickly for his liking.

"It will." He decided to let it go. Sometimes it was best to go into things without total knowledge of all possible consequences.

"So the next time I get a clear shot of a guy or some distinct object or monument, you guys will be able to see it too?" Claudia nodded, mumbling an "In theory" and then slid the screwdriver into the pocket of her jeans, turning away from Pete to bounce back and forth between the machines she'd set up. "And what are they doing?" He asked, waving a wired hand towards them. "Because I gotta say, Pete no likey being bonded to homemade whatchamacallits that, knowing you, could suddenly obtain sentiency at any given moment." She threw him an amused look over her shoulder.

"That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me." Then, making a show of brushing away a non-existent tear, she turned a small, ridged black dial a few clicks to the right and let her eyes scan the digital display. "These babies are monitoring your heart rate and brainwaves." At Pete's odd gurgle of amazement, she turned back to him wearing a wry smile and arching an eyebrow. "I know. I was surprised they managed to find them, too." He knitted his eyebrows together again and clucked his tongue, shaking his head in feigned sadness.

"You know, words hurt, Claude." She grinned at him then, reaching to muss his hair.

"You're a big boy Petey, I'm sure you can take it." He scowled at her and lifted the hand not hardwired in to smooth out his short locks.

"So how'd you come up with it?" At that, Claudia paused in her bend to adjust the clamps on his fingers and the movement might have gone unnoticed by someone who didn't live with the young woman, but Pete didn't have time to question it before Claudia was speaking again.

"Myka said H.G. gave her the idea. I'm just expanding on it." Pete started violently beneath her hands, causing her to pull back from him like he'd just tried to Chinese finger trap her with his mind.

"You're testing the ideas of a fruit-loop on me?" He barked, his wide-eyed gaze following her as she stood again

"Just calm your man-boobs, Sylvia Browne." She snapped, hands held out palm down in a gesture of placation despite the somewhat harsh glare she was giving him. "Regardless of how her profile might read, H.G. is all kinds of brilliant and I'm not letting a bitching idea slip away just because its source has had a tendency in the past to be less than reputable." Pete gaped at her, mouth working in silence until his words left him in a rush.

"That is **exactly** why you let ideas slip away!" He yelped, tone dangerously close to shrieking levels. "And her profile does say she's brilliant, dangerously so! Did you and Myka both get smacked over the head with the same sense-stealing artifact or something?" He was raving; she hated it when he raved. It made him all red-faced and sweaty. She hefted a sigh and counted to three, because Pete never gave her enough time to make it all the way to ten.

"I didn't get slapped with anything except a healthy dose of a none-Warehouse agent opinion." He blinked stupidly at her, mouth hanging open just a little as she distracted herself by rechecking the monitor readouts. "We walk around wearing our suits and some kind of rose-tinted hero goggles that let us see the world in the way we've been told it should be seen; like it's black and white. Bad guys, good guys, artifacts and none-artifacts. We're told that there are people like us and then there are people like H.G., and that there's a super distinct line that separates us. But nothing is ever as simple as just being black and white, Pete." His expression softened as she spoke, his frown melting to reveal a look caught somewhere between blank and understanding that really only left him looking a little confused. "We were told that H.G. was the bad guy, right?" Rhetorical, he didn't answer when she looked up at him. "That she was never supposed to leave the Bronze Sector, that she was dangerous. But we weren't told **why** and the really crappy thing is that we never even thought to ask. We just blindly followed orders. Is having that kind of faith in anyone ever a good thing? When you think a person or an establishment is so incapable of making a wrong decision that you don't even think to question them?" Her lips twisted and she pulled her lower one between her teeth. "I'm not saying that H.G.'s a good guy or someone we should trust, but I am saying that I think we need to start asking questions. She's just a shade of grey like the rest of us, trying to make it in a sometimes blindingly confusing world of colour." Though Pete's expression remained somewhat vacant, he seemed to consider her words for a long moment. Claudia returned his gaze, fingers absently fiddling with the strap of the tool belt that was slung low on her hips. Bits of multi-coloured wire stuck out at odd angles from the top of one of the small pouches, others were filled with smaller versions of the usual suspects: hammer, screwdrivers, a wrench or two. There was also a pocket that he knew was filled with a number of strangely shaped things that Pete could only think to describe as doohickeys.

"I don't like philosophical you." He said with a rueful smile, finally breaking the silence. "She makes a weird amount of sense." Claudia held her hands up, flourishing her fingers up and then back down to indicate herself.

"Uh, genius, duh." Her own smile was winsome, and making one last adjustment to the miniature dial on the front of the implant, she gave Pete a playful couple of slaps to his cheek. "Okay, all done. Your vitals are copasetic, but if you feel any unexplained nausea, dizziness, or, God forbid, you smell fudge, then you need to get your ass back here pronto. Capisce?" Pete lifted his hand to give her a mock salute.

"Yes, ma'am." He drawled, accent turning southern as he plucked the suction cup from his forehead with a dry sucking sound. Claudia took it from him and depressed the clamps at his fingertips, freeing them. He stood up from the armchair and stretched his arms over his head, letting out a satisfying groan as a bone somewhere in his shoulder popped back into place. "Why the sudden change of heart?" Claudia cast a glance over her shoulder at him from where she was putting everything back in its proper place. The Study was nothing if not organised chaos. It might have looked like a tornado had just vacated the premises, but Claudia always knew exactly where everything was. She gave him a half shrug.

"Myka has been known to make a weird amount of sense too sometimes." He regarded her with a thoughtful expression, before waggling his eyebrows.

"So, it's brainwashing then." She laughed at him and threw an errant suction cup in his direction. He batted it away with a hand and a smile and then a minute of silence found them. "She's still hanging out with she-who-shall-remain-nameless then?" His tone shifted with the words, turning in a direction that made Claudia lift a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.

"Okay for starters, there's no room in my study for Judgey McJudgers, so if you're gonna be like that you can take a walk." And her tone wasn't harsh, but it was warning and Pete had enough foresight to hold his hands up in placation.

"Who's judging around here? Not me. No siree, Bob." He heard her sigh.

"I know what it's like to go a little crazy after losing someone you love." Pete scratched at the newly cropped hair at the nape of his neck, sadness pulling at his heartstrings. Claudia had been through the ringer more times in her young life than most eighty-year-olds he knew. Which, granted, wasn't many, but his point still stood. "And Myka isn't 'hanging out' with her, okay?" Claudia tossed a pair of wire trimmers into a labeled plastic draw and then slid it shut with a little more force than was necessary before pivoting to face her teammate. "H.G. just kinda keeps showing up."

"I'm not really one for actually reading rule books, but I'm pretty sure stalking a federal offence." Pete intoned, eyebrows pulled together in a frown that betrayed no small amount of concern and mistrust.

"Maybe it isn't if the person being stalked isn't all that opposed to it?" Claudia offered with a dismissing wave of her hand. Humming aloud, Pete absently ran his fingers over a small rectangular object that was sitting on the top shelf of a multi-tiered metal table similar to the ones used in hospital operating rooms. Suddenly Claudia was at his side, slapping his hand away. He turned his head to stare at her, pouting in an affronted manner as he rubbed the back of his hand. "Unless you want to have you skin needlessly stitched together?" She challenged, eyebrows raised, and he seemed satisfied with the explanation. Moving away from anything that might tempt him further – he was only human after all, one with an insatiable curiosity he'd been told on multiple occasions, only the person telling him that usually used much stronger language – he idly scratched at the area around the implant.

"What game do you think Myka's playing?" Claudia seemed confused by the question and conveyed that to him by way of a blank stare. He gestured towards nothing in particular with a wave of a hand. "You know, letting H.G. tail her, secret meet ups, explicitly avoiding telling Artie or The Caretaker. It's not like Myka. She's usually so..."

"By the book?" Pete scrunched up his face at her offer and shook his head a little.

"I was going to say anal, but only 'cause it makes me giggle." And he did; with a grin the size of a five-year-olds and the apparent mental capacity to match. Claudia rolled her eyes.

"God, you're such a man-child." Removing her assortment of rings, she pulled off the plastic purple coloured gloves she'd been wearing and tossed them expertly into the trash can lying at the side of a paper-strewn desk a good five feet away. She pumped her arm, lifting a knee with the motion, and mouthed a silent 'score!' before straightening and returning her attention to Pete. She was about to voice her theories as to why Myka was being Miss Super-Secret Agent when the doors to the study swung inward and Steve Jinks, AKA 'Sooth', strolled into the room, a manila folder in one hand while the other held an apple he was currently sinking his teeth into.

He tossed the folder onto the surgical-like table and held out the hand with the apple in it, pointing down towards it.

"Watcher wants you to take a look at those." He mumbled around a mouthful of half-chewed apple and Claudia made a face.

"How is it that you are the least dude-like dude I know in terms of eloquence and smell, and yet you still eat like a pig?" He shrugged, eyes twinkling, smile wide and dripping apple juice.

"It's a gift." She made a noise of derision that he grinned at but otherwise ignored. He perched himself on the arm of a threadbare reading chair that Myka had insisted remain part of the décor, despite the fact that it didn't match anything else in the room. She'd argued that it matched the books. "What are we talking about?" Claudia, nose wrinkling in distaste as Steve took another slobbering bite of his apple, did not answer quickly enough, giving Pete free reign.

"Myka's secret lesbian club meet-ups." He waggled his eyebrows at Steve suggestively, receiving one that as slow to rise in return, and Pete's somewhat lecherous grin receded when he remembered who he was talking to.

"Oh, can I please be there the first time you decided to refer to it as that in front of Myka?" Claudia's question pulled his attention to her and he found her gazing at him beseechingly, hands clasped before her and eyes playfully pleading.

"Is this about H.G. Wells?" Steve asked with a slight crease to his forehead, seeming to choose his words carefully. Claudia rolled her eyes at him, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the desk behind her.

"Please, when it is **not** about H.G.?" She retorted with a tilt of her head, the bright green streak in her hair shifting forward to slide over her natural red.

"Whenever Artie's around." Steve pointed out and Claudia narrowed her eyes at him, brandishing a screwdriver that had appeared out of nowhere in his direction.

"Yeah, well, what Artie's doesn't know won't kill him."

"Noooo." Pete drawled, eyes becoming a tad wide, "but it might kill Myka." Absently depositing the tool onto the desk, Claudia barked a laugh and raised her eyebrows.

"Believe me, the last thing H.G. wants to do if off Myka." She paused, a play on words so desperately close to leaping from her lips she had to literally struggle with her inner self to rein them in. She didn't need to add fuel to Pete's perv-pyre. She saw the argument starting to form in the older agent's mind reflecting on his face and decided to stop him before he hand chance to voice it. "Look, I saw them that night, okay? It was dark, but the night vision on my visor works pretty damn well; **not** that I would have needed it. You could literally see the sparks a block over."

"But what does it all mean?" Pete's voice adopted a thinly effective British accent and his hand came up to cradle an invisible pipe close to his mouth. He made a show of smacking his lips and then pretended to puff on the pipe, arching an eyebrow inquisitively. Steve shrugged.

"Does it matter?" Both Claudia and the still puffy-cheeked Pete turned to stare at him in disbelief. He shrugged again, taking a number of small bites of his apple to finish it off. "I mean, aside from her being the enemy and all." He spent a moment chewing thoroughly and then, once he'd swallowed, decided to enlighten them. "It's obvious that Myka is sneaking around, whether or not she's partaking in organising these 'meet ups'," he shot Pete a look, "she presumably isn't doing anything to deter them, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't still be happening." He allowed them a moment to ponder on that, sliding from the arm of the chair to drop the apple core into the trash can before resuming his position. "Obviously Myka is getting something from H.G." A short round of giggles burst from Pete, unable to be contained and perfectly capable of being ignored. "But does it matter whether or not we know what that is?" Steve lifted a shoulder in a half shrug and then brought a hand up to brush the palm over his bristly hair. "I haven't known Myka as long as you guys have, but I think I've been around long enough to confidently state that Myka doesn't walk into things without meticulous planning." At that, Claudia snorted.

"We once spent an entire day going over the quickest way to get the artifact we were out to snag into a static bag. I'm not saying that it wasn't an important element of the plan but, you guys, an entire day. There were **blueprints** involved. And these weirdly padded salad-tong grabby things she'd invented." Pete laughed at the memory, he hadn't been in the room at the time, but he'd been able to hear the commotion while eavesdropping in the hallway.

"She always knows what she's doing." Steve assured them. "This won't be any different."

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><p>"<em>I have no idea what I'm doing."<em> Recall reflected from her position dangling from the balcony of a ninth floor apartment building, nothing hiding her but the cover of darkness. Her cowl kept getting in her way and the railings she was clinging to were slippery from the rain that had only recently ceased. _"Why do you always do things the hard way? There are perfectly good stairs inside the building."_ She huffed, sliding her left arm around the thin pole of metal and holding on tight as she reached up with her right. _"But no, superhero Myka,"_ she grunted, slowly pulling herself upwards, _"had to scale the side of the building like one of Pete's comic book characters."_ With a restrained groan, she heaved herself over the side of the balcony and toppled ungracefully, though silently, to its cement floor. Crawling the short distance to a wall beside the sliding door of the apartment that would hide her from view, Recall got to her feet and brushed a gloved hand over her black leg guards. Strong enough to withstand a bullet, malleable enough to allow for the flexibility needed to inelegantly fall over a wall or kick some guy's teeth down his throat. A material of her own design that was still currently unnamed, despite the fact that Claudia had suggested many which the redhead had deemed more than suitable. 'Myklar' had been top of her list, because of how "it's like Kevlar, only better."

Recall thumbed open a pouch at her hip, fingers dipping inside to retrieve a small circular object. It looked similar to a compact, though it was a little bigger than could be considered a convenient size, and she flipped it open with a flick of her wrist. She inched closer to the door and held her arm out, slowly moving it so that it was positioned in front of the glass and tilting it in just a way that she could see what was being projected in its mirrored surface. There were people inside, that much was unmistakeable, but it was too dark to make out who they were or what they were doing. She sent the pad of her thumb searching for a small, almost flat nub she knew lay along the side of the lower portion of the device and, finding it, she slid it along the pathway that had been moulded for it, watching as the reflection zoomed in. She waited the few moments it would take for the image to clear and then stared at what she was seeing with wide, incredulous eyes. Snapping the mirror closed, she launched herself from the wall and gripped the handle of the sliding door, wrenching it open with so much force she was honestly a little surprised she didn't rip it from its runner.

"What are you doing here?" She demanded, long legs taking her over the threshold and into the dim room. There was a middle-aged blonde woman handcuffed to the radiator against the wall opposite her who looked thoroughly annoyed at being in her current predicament, something to which Recall could relate. Gaze shifting from the sitting woman, it found the hem of a long tan duster and swept up along the length of it. She was a little irritated to find her breath catching when she met the expected deep brown gaze of The Artificer. "And how did you get in without me seeing you?"

"I'm inclined to think that I'm here for precisely the same reasons as you." Her tone was smooth, laced with thin threads of humour that tugged at her lips upward a way that would have been imperceptible to anyone else. "And I used the stairs," she said airily, "a handy invention that we **did** in fact have in my day, darling." And the Warehouse agent found herself needing the distraction of depositing the mirror back into its pouch in order to regain her quickly depleting composure.

"You stole my mark," she griped, eventually bringing her head back up to meet the other woman's gaze. "Again." The stern emphasise with which she delivered the word did nothing but lift one corner of H.G.'s mouth a little higher.

Helena was without her goggles that day and their absence cause Recall a moment's wonder, as did the thick cylindrical silver tube the other woman had strapped to her back. Her hair flowed about her shoulders in its usual inky beauty and it appeared as though all she were wearing beneath her duster was a pair of fitted dark brown pants and a thin pale blue button-down shirt. That, and an entirely too pleasantly contrite expression.

"Ah. Well then, you have my sincerest apologies." Lips pursed beneath her cowl, Recall took stock of Helena's raised eyebrows and the slightly mischievous glimmer to her gaze and decided that the chances that the other woman was being 'sincere' was about as likely as Pete turning away cookies. And she'd personally seen him snap up at least two after barfing up his lunch. She threw a reproachful, narrow-eyed gaze in Helena's direction.

"And I'm guessing you have my artifact." Reaching into the pocket of her duster with a gloved hand, The Artificer carefully retrieved a small glass vile that was partially filled with an opaque pinkish liquid. She held her arm out towards the agent and moved her wrist so that the vile swung back and forth in her grip.

"I am indeed in possession of an artifact." H.G. said, and then quickly curled her fingers around it when Recall reached forward. Helena arched an eyebrow slowly, regarding the taller woman with a smug smile. "Though I have thus far been unable to find your name on it. Curious." Momentarily closing her eyes and counting to three, Recall let the air slip from her in a quiet gasp of annoyance.

"Listen," she paused, eyes darting to the handcuffed woman sitting against the radiator before pointedly addressing Helena by the name under which the world had come to know her, "Artificer, I need that." She pointed toward the inventor's fisted hand, eyes never leaving the dark-haired woman's face, and she felt her heart thud forebodingly in her chest when Helena pursed her lips and seemed barely able to contain her smile.

"I find it very hard to believe you would require such drastic aid in order to be granted the returned affection of one whose heart you wish you capture." The words flowed from Helena's lips along the wave of a short burst of tinkling laughter, tickling at something inside the Warehouse agent. Despite her urging, Recall felt a blush begin to rise and hoped her cowl combined with the shadowed room would be enough to cover it. Neither of those things, however, would help her come up with a reply and so she found herself standing in a darkened room of an unnamed apartment building, staring silently at the smirking face of her would-be enemy. Completely and utterly unable to form words.

"If you guys are finished with…" Two sets of eyes darted down toward the woman sitting against the radiator with her legs stretched out before her, feet crossed at the ankles. She was regarding them with a raised eyebrow and a mutedly interested, though slightly confused expression, "whatever it is that you're doing." She rattled the handcuffs holding her in place and let that signal the end of her sentence.

"Handcuffs?" Recall turned to face H.G. once more, her own eyebrows raised beneath her cowl. "Why would you even-?" And The Artificer's lips were forming what was sure to be an answer that bordered very closely on TMI and one the hero wasn't entirely certain she could handle at that moment. "You know what? Never mind." So she cut her off, brushing past the British former-agent and closing the distance between herself and the woman regarding her with a somewhat blank expression. "What were you thinking?" Recall chastised, not really expecting an answer. The woman hefted her shoulders, her face becoming a mask of some familiar sorrow.

"I just wanted to be loved." But as sad as the artifact thief seemed, there was an underlying greed that couldn't be denied.

"By seven different men?" She asked, incredulous.

"And one woman." Helena intoned with an overly cheerful enthusiasm and Recall could picture the grin on her face.

"There are five people in the hospital because of you." She shook her head, staring down at the felon with a remorseful gaze. "Was it worth that?" An answer was not forthcoming and after a moment Recall turned to The Artificer with an outstretched palm. "Key." Brown eyes blinked mischievously at her and she felt her heart give an overly exuberant couple of beats. "Please." Clenched teeth made the word a little more indistinct than usual, but they succeeded in their endeavor and H.G. pulled a small handcuff key from the pocket of her pants. She sidled up to the hero, reaching out with her empty hand and grasping the one outstretched before her.

"Since you asked so nicely." She drawled, accent thick and smile full of private, yet obvious thoughts as she placed the key into Recall's waiting palm. Her gloved fingers grazed the length of it as she pulled it back and their eyes connected.

"Haven't you ever wanted to be loved so badly that you'd do anything just to feel it returned?" The woman's voice broke through the trance that had caught them in its web and Recall tilted her head back down towards the other woman, a reproachful expression shadowing her features.

"What you had with those people wasn't love." She said, disdain spilling from her mouth. "You forced them under your spell; you tricked them into loving you. What they felt for you wasn't real and whatever feelings you had for them, it wasn't love." The woman's pale blue eyes turned suddenly dark, stormy as they gazed up at the hero.

"Yeah?" She said, her voice a low, derisive growl. "What do you know about love?" With a pointedly heated glare, Recall declined to answer.

The few moments it took to free the woman, haul her to her feet and re-handcuff her hands behind her back were spent in silence. Recall's movements were jerky with agitation, but she refused to allow herself to dwell on the reasons for it and finally turned to face The Artificer. Only to find her strolling towards the sliding doors as if they'd just said goodbye after a nice afternoon spent catching up on the trivialities of their lives.

"Hey!" It was supposed to be a strong, perturbed-sounding shout, but it came out as more of a surprised squeak. "Where do you think you're going?" H.G. spun, tails of her duster dancing through the air, and she flashed an apologetic smile.

"Much as I'd love to stay, I'm afraid a pressing engagement is forcing my leave." In an undignified show of eloquence, Recall sputtered.

"You can't just-" The twinkling of Helena's eyes cut her off even before the British woman's voice did.

"I do believe I can." And then stepping out onto the balcony and reaching for some unseen apparatus beneath her coat, she said, "Until next time, darling." Then there was an explosion of steam and Helena was soaring impossibly upwards, a knowing grin plastered across her face. Blinking stupidly at the scene unfolding before her, Recall momentarily forgot all about the woman currently under her arrest and strode out onto the balcony.

"Unbelievable!" She yelled, staring up at the form of The Artificer as she disappeared over the top of the apartment building behind a cloud of steam. It wasn't just that she found the woman infuriating at times; that would be easily handled in comparison. No, it was the fact that she found Helena all kinds of brilliant and intelligent and, God help her, charming. And Helena knew it. She knew there would be no one chasing after her and very few repercussions come their next meeting. Because there would undoubtedly be a next meeting. Shaking her head at herself, Recall turned back and found the darkened room empty. Her rueful smile slid from her face and she jogged back inside, mood shifting rapidly in the direction of 'pissed off'. "Why do they always run?" She fumed, but then stopped short as she strode by the small island on her way to the wide open door of the apartment. There sitting on the countertop was the vile of pinkish liquid she'd come here for.

After a few heartbeats, Recall lifted the vile and slid it into one of the pouches at her belt, trying vainly to ignore the way her stomach was fluttering as she bolted out of the apartment hot on the tail of her would-be escaper.

She really didn't have any idea what she was doing.


End file.
